Another Texas Politician, already under indictment for securities fraud, now has the balls to say that handing plum positions in his office to his drinking buddies is perfectly legal, in spite of what the Law actually says.

Certainly the Texas Political machine has it’s quirks, but those quirks all too often seem to manifest themselves in a totally corrupt organization that is rivaled only by the Defense industry.

I figured something out though. See, when Ronald Reagan defunded the mental-health system, it was apparent that the problems in that system really were insurmountable and the whole system needed to be scrapped and replaced with something entirely new, which didn’t happen because it seems much more appropriate for the conservative paradigm to just let schizophrenics, keptomaniacs and homicidal maniacs wander around in the streets.

Except for Texas. Texas just started putting their lunatics in public office, where they could earn a decent living and be productive for the right people.

When political corruption becomes endemic, the corruption becomes the system. Once it is entrenched, it is all but impossible to rectify without just putting a huge number of people up against the wall and shooting them.

I think I am beginning to understand something. That is, that because the entirety of the Republican and much of the establishment Democrat parties is corrupt, people expect that corruption to serve them somehow if they only send the right criminals to office, not realizing that constantly voting for corrupt individuals only results in greater levels of corruption in government. Then they start thinking that, because Government is corrupt, that corruption is inherent in the system and the entirety of it should be destroyed without taking into consideration as to what might replace it.

One cannot complain about corrupt politicians when that is all one ever votes to put in office. It then becomes so ubiquitous that people really start thinking that “our corrupt lying thieving assholes are (prettier, sneakier, richer, slickier) better than your corrupt lying thieving assholes, so our side is the right side to be on” simply because they burble the platitudes and cheap 7-second soundbites that they agree with.

The CIA in 2012 proposed a detailed covert action plan designed to remove Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, but President Obama declined to approve it, current and former U.S. officials tell NBC News.

It’s long been known that then-CIA Director David Petraeus recommended a program to secretly arm and train moderate Syrian rebels in 2012 to pressure Assad. But a book to be published Tuesday by a former CIA operative goes further, revealing that senior CIA officials were pushing a multi-tiered plan to engineer the dictator’s ouster. Former American officials involved in the discussions confirmed that to NBC News. … In the memoir she published last year, “Hard Choices,” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she advocated having the CIA arm the rebels in 2012, siding with Petraeus in internal White House debates.

Petraeus, Ford and other officials held weekly meetings on the issue during the summer and fall of 2012, former officials say.

Neither Petraeus nor Ford would comment about the covert plan, but Ford said in an interview that he believes ISIS would not have been able to declare a caliphate in Raqqah, Syria, if the U.S. government had taken steps in 2012 to bolster what was then called the Free Syrian Army.

“In my 30 years as a defense attorney, almost 10 as a state or federal prosecutor, I have rarely or ever seen a situation where a lawyer can provide a common defense to multiple people without there being a conflict of interest at some point in some regard,” he said. “It’s rare that the common defense would in fact be the best defense for all the people under investigation.”

The number of American households with assets of $1 million or more, not including their primary residence, increased 3 percent last year, from 10.1 million, according to Spectrem Group, a market research and consulting firm.

The total marked a new record, but also signaled a slowdown from the 5 percent growth rate in 2014, when climbing stock markets and rising real estate values helped create 500,000 new millionaires.

@4 Boob thinks Assad would have been toppled in 2012, and the ugly Syrian civil war avoided, if only Obama had allowed the CIA to arm the right people. Brilliant! It might work on a planet where paper schemes never go astray, dictators cooperate with being deposed, and civil wars never get out of control. But on the planet we live on, presidents are paid to assess risks and weigh odds, and Obama apparently looked at this and didn’t like what he saw. Meanwhile, conservatives still lament that JFK didn’t let LeMay bomb Cuba in October 1962, even though we now know how suicidally wrong LeMay was.

“…I have rarely or ever seen a situation where a lawyer can provide a common defense to multiple people without there being a conflict of interest at some point in some regard.”

Common defense? Defense of what? Have charges been filed in secret? Are the secret, undisclosed charges filed in the super-secret invisible hidden federal court where the missing 101 FBI agents are located? Will the trial be invisible too?

So far as we know, this is a preliminary investigation to see if there is any evidence for which a charge can be filed at some later date. These are informational interviews being sought by the FBI to answer questions they presumably have developed in the course of the investigation up to this point. Having a single attorney represent the staffers makes perfect sense under the circumstances. It just doesn’t sound as dramatic or sensational as Ms. Bade’s editors would like. So she juices the reporting with some random speculations. But the speculations are way off target since there is still no criminal prosecution under way.

More from the second paragraph of your shitty source:“The united front suggests they plan to tell investigators the same story…”

Pick any 10 wage slaves off the street at random and try to convince them of that.

“Bragging and boasting does nothing to change that.”

This shows how dense you are, Boob. Harping on the absurdity of a system that enriches freeloaders while screwing the workers who produce wealth isn’t “bragging and boasting,” it’s pleading for change.

This from a troll who constantly whines that raising subhuman wages to subsistence level will cost jobs (a thesis unsupported by research) of workers he doesn’t care about. The only thing you have against me getting rich from stocks is your Republican pals were supposed to get that loot. It’s not the system you’re upset about.

If you don’t believe “the women” should be thrown into jail for it, theeeennnn…

you actually don’t really regard it as “murder”, or “the taking of a human life”.

You just say that. It’s just this thing you say because you think it sounds good a puts your hatred on a moral high plane. Even though you don’t really mean it. Which makes you a liar. And puts you in a moral pit – lying to advance hatred of women.

@18, as the sweeping and abundant fallacies of “conservatism” continue to unravel and divide the Republican party we can probably expect to see more of that kind of unfiltered hatred exemplified by Gohmert or by Trump’s fuck-up promising to lock up pregnant women.

For a pretty long time the right has been courting these kinds of beliefs while simultaneously suppressing their open expression. Remember Newt’s little black book of sayings? From the beginning modern movement conservatism has been about the deceptive use of language to conceal or obscure the underlying appeals to bigotry, intolerance, and anti-feminism. But the sales job has been a little too successful for their own good.

Whether delusional cult enthusiast like Gohmert, or arrogant blow-hard like Trump, more and more of “conservatism’s” banner carriers are losing track of the code book as they dive deeper into the fever swamp in search of angry white men. And the post “W” embrace of anti-intellectualism and “outsider” cred renders the conservative establishment’s efforts to correct the transgressors useless and impotent. Sure, Paul Ryan “regrets” his referring to retirees as “entitled” “takers”. And he’s been far more careful in his use of language since then. But he’s losing his Quixotic campaign to “re-focus” his party, and he knows it. The barbarians are no longer at the gate. They are in the Republican master bedroom suite eating chicken wings in bed and stinking up the shitter.

@4, @11 Somehow, a scenario amounting to a Halal version of the Bay of Pigs comes to mind. Also makes a nice addition, if you’re into conspiracy theories, of which of many conceivable offers made to the General that he had the temerity to refuse resulted in the likes of Paula Broadwell appearing out of nowhere and dragging him to perdition. (Methinks, though, that turning down Roger Ailes’ offer to put him in the Oval Office is still in the lead.)

@11 Of course you are over looking the fact the United States supported Castro’s over turning the Cuban government in a similar situation as Assad. It worked, only the United States reneged on the agreements made with Castro and the rebels rather than living up the agreement and biding our time. Also Kennedy put down a line not to be crossed and did implement a naval blockade. Had the operational nuclear weapons been known under US policy Kennedy would have had to consider using SAC as his flexible response would no longer have been an option. In part the President and his team misread a report from the Air Force that stated the Air Force could take out the Soviet missile bases. Nor did all the Cuban missile crises stop the US and Russia each doing 2 missile tests with atomic warheads that were detonated in space.

@14 Of course taking the fifth only applies to yourself. If your being questioned as a witness and the questioners are FBI agents you answer the questions or you can be charged with impeding an investigation. Of course lying to an federal investigator is an offense and not answering questions is lying by omission. And yes coercion is an acceptable practice along with the old prisoners dilemma. Hard men and mafia types know not to talk, do these staffers have that kind of mettle if there is more than smoke here.

What are liberals doing to do differently to influence the hearts and mind of the people who vote for republicans? You can’t argue with them, that just drives them deeper into their corners. Nothing will change unless we find ways to interact with conservatives in ways that shows them other options. They have to be able to make up their own minds that voting for republicans is destructive and or voting for a non republican is in some way beneficial to them.

For example, why don’t liberals have a 50 state media strategy and buy or lease or build am radio stations in all rural markets and promote positive progressive content? Why abandon the public air waves in the rural areas to prosperity doctrine Kristians and tea bagger hate mongers?

Have you ever seen a horse drawn to a Central Park horse carriage on the side of the street, waiting it’s turn, in line with the rest of them, for the pleasure to pull 3 overweight Americans around the park because they are too lazy to walk? Sometime they get restless leg syndrome while waiting, I’m sure there is a horse related word associated with it. But it reminds me of a stupid republican who happens to be hung (like a horse) and is restlessly stepping from side to side but every time he does he steps on his cock. And as “hard” as he tries, he can’t but stomp on his dick with each hoof step.

@42 they’ve been too stupid to figure it out for themselves, brainwashing GOP is powerful and stronger than crack cocaine addiction.

I don’t think their is anything you can do for stupid retarded people.

What needs to be done to get these morons to speak out against something like NC discrimination bills? It shouldn’t be too hard for them to be against that type of shit. But they aren’t. How do you fix being stupid? It’s not easy.

@39, Incorrect. Only judges, grand juries, and Congress have the authority to compel appearance and testimony. That’s what a subpoena does. And even then you may still invoke your right if answering a question might incriminate you.

Nobody may ever be compelled to talk to the police. Ever. Even in a traffic stop you must produce your documents but you do not have to answer questions. During a Terry stop, depending upon the state, you may be required to verbally identify yourself. But you cannot be charged with a crime for remaining silent during interrogation, whether “permissive” or not. But you certainly can if you elect to answer questions, and any of your answers are later shown to be false or misleading. Your constitutional rights don’t go on and off with a switch. You have precisely the same legal rights before an encounter with LE, during, and in the case of arrest after being advised according to Miranda.

@38 It doesn’t sound like you understand what happened. What I’m referring to is (a) the U.S. didn’t know Moscow also had deployed 100 tactical nukes to Cuba, and U.S. airstrikes against the strategic missile sites wouldn’t have touched these weapons; and (b) Moscow had delegated launch authority to field commanders, and a U.S. attack on Cuba would have triggered their use. In fact, the blockade nearly did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov

And you’re not trying to do the same thing? But your links don’t really “agree” with Palin’s simplistic belief that Reagan’s motorcycle tariff saved Harley Davidson from Japanese competition. The reality is that (a) Japanese motorcycles didn’t compete directly against Harleys, because Harley had a unique product with a loyal following, (b) Harley was facing bankruptcy because of quality issues not foreign competition, and (c) Harley was saved, not by the tariffs, but by their own efforts to rescue their business from previous mismanagement.

I didn’t go looking for a link “that disagrees with Palin.” Anyone who does ANY reading on this subject will find there’s more to the story than Reagan’s motorcycle tariff. There’s an argument here that temporary tariffs may be a useful tool in certain circumstances, but the Harley case doesn’t validate Palin’s blanket argument in favor of tariffs to “save” American industry from predatory foreign competition. Nearly all objective economists agree that a tariff policy such as advocated by Trump and Palin is destructive. Of course, no thinking person expects Palin to be right about anything. Her peculiar fame comes from making an art form of being an ignorant twit.

@39 Taking the Fifth isn’t limited to persons charged with a crime. A witness can assert the Fifth, and if he does, there’s no way for a prosecutor to prove his testimony won’t implicate him. The only way around this is to grant the witness immunity from prosecution, a tool prosecutors sometimes (but not always) use in this situation.

But even that doesn’t assure a witness’s cooperation. I recall reading a law school case that went like this. A Chicago lawyer sent a letter to the IRS saying, “My client, who wishes to remain anonymous, wants to pay taxes. Enclosed is a check for $1 million.” The IRS, naturally, wanted to know who the taxpayer was. The lawyer refused. So the IRS dragged him to court and persuaded a judge to order him to spill the beans. The lawyer responded, “Your Honor, with all due respect, I’d rather be in jail than dead.” He served his contempt time and never did identify his client.

An innocent bystander who witnessed a criminal act usually will cooperate with police and prosecutors. This issue normally comes up only when the witness is involved in the criminal activity under investigation, or the case in question is some kind of political witch hunt.

I never really understood why some people and the mayor of NYC want to get rid of the horses. A horse is a horse that was meant to pull something.

But then I googgled Central Park horse carriage (images), looking for a good representation of one pulling 3 fat people, before coming across the all white one linked above. But now I understand why some think they should get rid of them. Take a looksy for yourselves.

For example, why don’t liberals have a 50 state media strategy and buy or lease or build am radio stations in all rural markets and promote positive progressive content? Why abandon the public air waves in the rural areas to prosperity doctrine Kristians and tea bagger hate mongers?

Silly, silly Better.

Give some consideration to ‘progressive’ media content and who that content has enriched.

Spend some time perusing the history of Air America. Al Franken, prior to becoming a US Senator, was on AA. Compensated quite nicely, was Al, even as the station was circling the drain. A certain boys and girls club fared not nearly as well as did Al.

HuffPo. Arianna Huffington did quite well cashing in to AOL.

Al Gore’s Current TV did pretty well for him when he sold to Al Jazeera.

There has been plenty of progressive media in our recent past, Better. Follow the money. Prosperity lives on each side. No corporate lie.

“Meanwhile, Walder released a lengthy statement to The Huffington Post condemning the ruling, writing, “We may be out of step with an increasingly anti-Christian culture, but we are in compliance with God’s design and that is what ultimately matters.”

Sorry buddy, you should have developed a phobia of divorces getting married an re-married and re-married, and the Straights from living in sin and having children out of wedlock.

I guess so now you decide to think that there is an increasing anti Christian culture, maybe it’s just your phobia starting to kick in. You can settle it, get out of the B&B business and or any other service industry type business, nobody is forcing you to have a job. You know if being a human being didn’t entitle you to fair treatment what makes you think you are any different?

@39 (continued) My comment @57 concerns testifying in court or before a body like Congress. As DR points out @46, you can’t be charged with a crime for refusing to talk to police. Crimes falling under the rubric of “obstruction” or “impeding an investigation” require an affirmative act, such as witness tampering or hiding evidence.

There are legitimate reasons for innocent people to not submit to police interrogations without a lawyer present. The fact our police system sends numerous innocent people to prison — and death row — points out the necessity of approaching police interrogations with extreme caution.

The police are incentivized to solve crimes. Catching the right person is a lesser priority. The easiest and quickest way to resolve a case is by coaxing an admission from a suspect. Since most convictions are obtained with confessions, police efforts are heavily directed toward getting people to confess.

The interrogator won’t tell you the police consider you a suspect and not just a witness; in fact, he’ll actively encourage you to believe you’re not under suspicion or in jeopardy, because that makes easier to get you to talk. He has a specific goal and will try to maneuver you into saying what he wants to hear. He sees his job as getting a damaging admission from you, and may not care whether it’s true. He has many tactics at his disposal, and will keep coming at you from various angles and continue wearing you down until he gets what he wants.

The fact you’re innocent doesn’t mean the police think you are. You may say “X,” and “X” may be true, but if they believe “Y,” they’ll think you’re lying and try to get you to change your story from “X” to “Y.” Or they may try to frame you, either because they don’t like you, or so they can claim they solved the crime. Or they may be lazy, stupid, and incompetent. Or their judgment may be clouded by stereotyping, bigotry, or racism.

It’s always easier for them to accuse a person sitting in front of them than to go out and beat the bushes for another suspect. Eliminating you as a suspect isn’t their preferred outcome. Pinning the crime on you is.

@49 If you want better inner city schools, then pay higher taxes to support those schools. Money alone won’t solve all their ills, but you can’t have good schools without adequate resources. There’s a pretty strong correlation between underperforming schools and the poverty of the surrounding neighborhoods. The better-funded schools in affluent neighborhoods don’t have those problems. The money to pull up the schools serving the poor has to come from us, because the poor can’t contribute that money.

@52 The question to ask is not, “did she do it?” but “so what?” Lots of people did. It became common practice. If it’s a bad practice, and it probably is, the emphasis should be on changing the practice, not exploiting past practices to damage the other party’s candidates. That behavior just makes it harder to accomplish reforms.

@46 And in this situation the FBI investigator would not be prepared to go to a judge? Or already have the subpoena in the event they decided to skip the step of the friendly interview. Although if you are a witness then you can’t take the fifth, although you may refuse to answer a police officers questions. If you have witnessed a bank robbery and refuse to answer any questions you may find it odd that you get to stand around a lot longer than other witnesses, or get interviewed last.

@53 Reading the full article it would appear the second in command was fully aware of the submarines actual tactical conditions. Whether they launched a torpedo or not the sub would have had to have surfaced anyways. So why not surface and find out the situation and launch afterwards.

You really think McNamara and his whiz boys would have said not to bomb Cuba had it been revealed there were live atomic weapons on the island and the local commanders could order their use. The decision could have been taken out of the Presidents hand by a declaration of war by Congress and in 1962 that could have happened.

Would SAC have been using Iron bombs? Doubt it. Were there any serious plans of invading Cuba? Even from Gitmo? Again probably not. The reason the Soviet Union had the bombs in Cuba was out of desperation and a response to American superiority particularly SAC that was fully capable of major devastation of the USSR and while the US would have been hit had the Soviet Union elected to support Cuba rather than writing it off as would likely have been the case. Yes a very nasty war, but not necessarily a global war, and the brunt of it or totality on Cuba. Much American angst and perhaps a world actually wanting to get rid of these ugly weapons. Doubt we would have not used a hydrogen bomb on Havana.

@57 Which gets back to the five using the same attorney. Which may or may not be a good strategy. Of course it’s a strategy that can cause charges to be filed when they may not have been filed in the first place by a prosecutor. Lets see if they stand firm as we may only need one to get past the wall. Taking it also means a prosecutor will look for the individuals involvement, and ultimately can mean they end up going to jail for contempt of court. Are these 5 willing to go that far. Can one attorney give all 5 the same advice without running into issues of conflict of interests between the potential defendants. Especially if the best advice the attorney could give to the defendants is talk to the investigator and tell the truth.

@60 There are reasons the automobile and streetcar are popular and they have to do with horses, and what they produce and require. Yet no cities citizens prior to the auto would have seriously suggested getting rid of horses. They of course would have been fully acquainted with horse drawn conveyance and not found it quant at all.

@61 That is true except for NPR all radio is about making money. Even Rush Limbough admits when you strip everything down what he does is all about entertainment and he makes a killing doing it. He’d have stayed at his first radio gig if it had paid well enough.

@64 Of course they are talking about FBI agents here. In any case one probably should only speak to the police and especially the FBI. This of course tends to upset the police, and maybe overkill if you saw Jack Ruby digging in Mrs. Grubers garden on a particular afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia.

@64 And of course they love the Prisoners dilemma with 5 it’s even better, even with the same attorney. Wouldn’t the FBI eventually challenge one attorney representing all five? Thus creating the prisoners dilemma. Assuming the 5 are not creating unnecessary smoke in the matter.

@67 What she did was banal and stupid especially as she was the State Departments classification authority. What is happening here does illustrate the difference in how the political class (of both parties) are treated when handling or disseminating classified material, and the non political class. Manning is in prison. Snowden is in Moscow. Julian Assange is still in the embassy in London because he fears extradition if he goes to Sweden to answer questions to the police. He’s not even an American citizen and certainly is not part of another nations government, just a news guy. So how can he be guilty under our espionage act a nation he has no obligations too. I do find the fact that Clinton was the classification authority and set up this server. Not surprising due to the Clinton white house attitude toward security. Although they do have a point it often goes overboard and can be overly broad. Transparency is best. Still government requires keeping some secrets the fewer the better. An overhaul of the nations espionage laws is needed. They were born during WWI and the law should have expired at the end of the conflict, but the law continues in effect since the US Congress never ratified the peace treaty. So it stuck around. It certainly does not take whistleblowing into account or the publics right to information. Or even when some dunderhead in the army classifies a news report or CNN report. It happens. Over classification costs the tax payers money and makes government less effective. It promotes distrust. It inflames rumors of Men in Black, UFOs, ect. Sometimes misdirection is needed. Some secrecy is needed yet we are a government of the people, by the people and for the people. There is tension between the right of the people to know and the necessity of there being some secrets and even privacy. I think the peoples right to know is the greater right, than governments right to keep things secret. If something needs to be kept secret for a time then it should become public in the shortest time possible and for something to remain secret after a generation of for longer then it should truly be a great secret. Not something to save embarassement for people living or dead. Governments are people and people tend to avoid embarrassment but that is not sufficient reason for secrecy.

There are reasons the automobile and streetcar are popular and they have to do with horses, and what they produce and require. Yet no cities citizens prior to the auto would have seriously suggested getting rid of horses. They of course would have been fully acquainted with horse drawn conveyance and not found it quaint at all.

This is a subject very near and dear to my heart. I’ve given this particular subject a lot of thought over the years. I read a book years ago about how cities functioned in the early machine age industrial period after the States War. Horses were the norm for transportation and power sources. In the 1890’s, cities like Chicago, New York and such were hauling out 180,000 tons, yes, tons, of horse manure off of the streets every single week. New York still has records of much of that, I think by 1900 they were hauling 30-40,000 tons a day.

Much of that was being dumped either directly in the bay or on Staten Island. The latter being almost entirely made up of old horse manure and city trash deposits that continued well into the late 1980s.

Now, I have read articles since and seen a few vids that show what happened with the advent of the internal combustion engines. That is, in 1910, the personal automobile was a luxury for the wealthy and most of the cartage was still being hauled around by horse-drawn wagons. By 1920, nearly every cargo shipment was brought in by small train or heavy trucks and the horses had all but disappeared. Ten years.

It seems that people preferred a little smoke to the giant piles of horseshit the city would stock up in empty lots for weeks on end. Every little turd being collected by guys pushing around a garbage can with a shovel and broom. It was a regular man’s job. The stink must have been fantastic.

Think of this: The dust in the summer when it dried out and blew around getting in people’s noses and hair and clothes. The stinking mush that it turned into when it rained, inches or feet deep in the streets. The runoff from the storage lots. Thats what Petticoats, high heels, bustles and fancy hats were all about.

Every day you’d see at least one or two dead horses lying in the road, worked to death and left where they dropped. The knacker was also a regular sight. Piles of chunks of horse in his wagon. That was their job, to saw up the carcass and haul it away to the recyclers. They’d do it right there in the street and toss the chunks into their wagons.

It was only the larger cities that bothered to pave their roads much, and really that only after the 1880s. Hell, Seattle was still building wooden flatboard sidewalks well into the 1880s. Many city streets were wooden plank and oiled dirt even into the 1930s.

Nobody missed the teeming masses of horses and wagons once they were gone.

@74,“@46 And in this situation the FBI investigator would not be prepared to go to a judge?”

Go to a judge with what? In this situation LE agents don’t get to go to a judge with anything except a criminal indictment or an application for a search warrant specific to place and contents. Search warrants only implicate your 4th Amendment rights, not 5th. I’ll just state it one more time and then leave it to you to go forth and discover the abundant documentation and legal precedent: in the United States you never, never ever ever, are compelled by law to give testimony to the police.

If you witness an event, it is not for you to determine if that event is a crime. That determination is for a court of law. And only such a court of law can compel you to testify. Whether or not you decide to voluntarily report what you have witnessed to the police is completely up to you. Your decision to report to the police may not be compelled or coerced. Ever. Only at trial under the order of a court of law can you be ordered to give testimony. And even then you may refuse if that testimony may incriminate you. You have precisely the same rights, whether you stand accused, or as a witness.

If you are a witness, or police believe you are a witness, they may “detain” you “briefly”. But by law, any such detention must be limited to the time needed by the police for the purposes of the detention. If the purpose of the detention is to ask you questions, and you clearly declare your intention to the police that you will not answer any questions, then the purpose of the police detention is fulfilled. And any further prolonging of the detention is a pretty serious violation of your civil rights. This is notably the case if the reason for prolonging the detention cited by the detaining authority is your refusal to answer questions. The LE agent may not delay, or needlessly prolong the detention just because a potential witness refuses to cooperate. The law is clear enough on this, even though some latitude is granted to LE agents. They must be continuously and actively engaged in their investigation throughout any such detention. LE agents may not cite your refusal to answer questions as a justification for needlessly prolonging or delaying a detention. If you think this is happening, my advice to anyone is to see if you can get the LE agent to say so, particularly if witnesses are present or the encounter is being recorded. There are competent attorneys who will be happy to sue the offending agency. There’s good money in it and defending counsel will typically seek a pre-trial settlement.

It seems very likely that in the case of the Clinton emails, the available evidence would not support criminal indictments. That’s speculation, of course. But if that is the case, then the employees involved would be best served, at this point, to remain silent and leave it up to the FBI to conclude their investigation and report their findings to the U.S. Attorney. There is bound to be substantial pressure on the Justice Dept. to bring some kind of prosecution out of this. Under the statutes relevant to the protection of classified information, that is both extremely difficult, and unlikely. That leaves the U.S. Attorney to fish around for some lesser violation, like obstruction. That being the case, these folks are more likely to put themselves in jeopardy by volunteering information to anyone.

You certainly can. Al Capone’s bookkeeper can invoke the Fifth on the grounds that testifying against his boss would incriminate him, too. At that point, the prosecutor may want to trade immunity for testimony.

“Think of this: The dust in the summer when it dried out and blew around getting in people’s noses…..”

If you want to experience that you still can. I use to ride my bicycle, for exercise, before joining a gym, everyday after work thru Central Park. Quite the experience, navigating amongst vehicles, people walking, people jogging, people rollerblading and scateboarding, and people just trying to cross from one side of the park to the other side of the park, the pedicabs, and the horse carriages. Just ask Bono who crashed and broke an arm or the woman from CT that was killed just crossing in the crosswalk and hit by a bicyclist, to name a few incidents.

But anyways, there were plenty of summer days when the horseshit dried and the passing vehicles would drive over and lift the dusty horseshit into the air for everyone to enjoy.

“Reading the full article it would appear the second in command was fully aware of the submarines actual tactical conditions. Whether they launched a torpedo or not the sub would have had to have surfaced anyways. So why not surface and find out the situation and launch afterwards.”

The article makes clear the three men aboard Soviet sub B-59 who had to authorize the launch of a nuclear torpedo against U.S. Navy ships didn’t know whether war had broken out. They believed they were under attack. Of the three, only Capt. Arkhipov held out. The main point here is they didn’t need authorization from Moscow to launch the torpedo, they could make that decision themselves, and only one of them said no.

“You really think McNamara and his whiz boys would have said not to bomb Cuba had it been revealed there were live atomic weapons on the island and the local commanders could order their use.”

McNamara gave the president advice but didn’t make that decision. Kennedy concluded at the very beginning of the crisis that the missiles couldn’t be allowed to remain in Cuba. His policy was to give Khrushchev an opportunity to remove the missiles from Cuba, and order the military to destroy them if he didn’t. The deadline, and U.S. military planning, was based on acting before they could become operational. The tactical nukes in Cuba, which were operational and could be used by the local Soviet commanders to defend themselves without further authorization from Moscow, didn’t figure into U.S. calculations because the U.S. didn’t know about them; and, of course, any U.S. attacks against Cuban missile sites would have failed to take out those weapons. At a minimum, the U.S. military forces would have suffered massive damage from these weapons, and their use could easily have escalated into a full-scale nuclear exchange. As McNamara said years later, “We came very close” to nuclear war, “closer than we knew at the time.”

“The decision could have been taken out of the Presidents hand by a declaration of war by Congress and in 1962 that could have happened.”

Congress could declare war, but the military wouldn’t do anything unless ordered by the commander-in-chief. In the actual event, Kennedy kept tight control over the decision-making. As this article makes clear, there was no chance of congressional hawks preempting his authority during the missile crisis.

Sounds like you’re arguing SAC would have used nukes to take out the Cuban missile sites. What’s your evidence of that?

“Were there any serious plans of invading Cuba? Even from Gitmo? Again probably not.”

Kennedy and his cabinet discussed both invasion and airstrike options. The Joint Chiefs favored invasion, had an operational plan to invade Cuba, and moved troops and equipment into position to do so.

“The reason the Soviet Union had the bombs in Cuba was out of desperation and a response to American superiority particularly SAC that was fully capable of major devastation of the USSR and while the US would have been hit had the Soviet Union elected to support Cuba rather than writing it off as would likely have been the case. Yes a very nasty war, but not necessarily a global war, and the brunt of it or totality on Cuba. Much American angst and perhaps a world actually wanting to get rid of these ugly weapons. Doubt we would have not used a hydrogen bomb on Havana.”

U.S. nuclear superiority was a factor, but the focus of Soviet strategic thinking was on missiles, not strategic bombers. The Soviets didn’t have an effective ICBM force at the time, so they decided to deter a U.S. strike against the USSR with what was available: Intermediate-range missiles positioned within range of the U.S. mainland, and of course the only place they could do that was in Cuba. The fact the U.S. had deployed IRBMs on the USSR’s border in Turkey also weighed; it was, to some extent, tit-for-tat. Moscow also wanted to use Cuba as a bargaining chip to get the U.S. and its allies out of West Berlin. Finally, Kennedy’s provocative actions in authorizing the Bay of Pigs operation and the CIA’s assassination campaign against Castro led Khrushchev and Castro to believe he would try to invade Cuba again. Khrushchev also perceived Kennedy to be a weak leader, which led him to think he could get away with putting the missiles in Cuba, or at least get West Berlin in exchange for removing them.

@86 And what about all the precedent that is present when all the participants have signed agreements with Uncle Sam about handling classified material. Under the agreement when the FBI agents show up to ask questions and they refuse to answer they are breaking the agreement, and specific portions of the espionage act. Probably their best defense is silence, but the FBI is able and perfectly willing to go to a judge. They can and will play rough. The question here is whether they will fall on sword for their boss or bosses. I don’t think the FBI has been given carte blanc as they are only beginning to do interviews. There are politics involved here. Which is why no charges have been brought up against Clinton. You and I know if Snowden comes into the US charges will be brought swiftly if they haven’t already. The FBI and justice department does need to either bring charges or state nothing illegal happened and end the investigation. Bring charges or shut it down. This will piss off the Republicans, and if Clinton doesn’t win the Presidency will she get a pardon from the outgoing President.

@87 You leave out the fact that the judge can tell Al Capones bookkeeper that he is in contempt of court and hold the man indefinitely in jail or prison until he decides to talk. Of course this may give the bookkeeper more incentive to talk as the Prosecutor will visit him there. Though the bookkeeper would best keep quiet. Meanwhile Mr Capone looks on from the defendants table at the trial and most likely goes home at night.

@91 Tactically you don’t launch a torpedo at another nations warships when you are low on batteries and your air is going bad on a diesel submarine. Especially if you are not at war. The fact the Captain and political officer wanted to launch not knowing the situation shows why the Soviets had put that command structure in place and in this particular case it worked.

SAC provided plans to hit Cuba using solely atomic weapons, using iron bombs and both. Kennedy and his advisors misread one locations probability of being taken out by iron bombs.

Of course there were plans to invade Cuba. Such plans are on the shelf today. The army and navy moves stuff in anticipation of what the President might order all the time. During the Cuban missile crises the army was fighting for relevance and so was the navy. The Kennedy administration was somewhat receptive, but not receptive enough to go for an invasion. If there had been an order to take the missiles out it would have been by SAC and would have involved nukes. Of course it would have gone after command and control, airfields ect. Kennedy knew an American attack would kill soviet personnel and that was a concern, but not as great as having the missiles on Cuban soil that the American people would not tolerate.

Of course if we had just held our noses about finding out our good buddy Castro who we supported when he invaded and not reneged on our promises the whole Cuban missile crises would not have happened. Then there is the whole Vietnam situation in 1962. Not like we were not there. Very buddy buddy with the President of Viet Nam our Vice President Lyndon Johnson dining and having drinks with him. Then the Kennedy administration would green light his assassination and that made things just so much better.

@103,“Under the agreement when the FBI agents show up to ask questions and they refuse to answer they are breaking the agreement, and specific portions of the espionage act.”

Can you support that, ’cause it’s the first I’ve ever heard anything like that. And it makes me wonder if perhaps you’ve got a few things confused. Otherwise, in simplest terms, any such portion of the “act” or any other such law would, of course, be unconstitutional. I’m thinking they’d have worked this out by now. As to whether or not any employment agreement can compel an employee to cooperate with an administrative inquiry, that really wouldn’t be the same thing at all. Police, for example, must respond to inquiries into allegations of official misconduct. And their CBAs will typically require them to answer questions, although often with some limitations. And the terms are extraordinarily biased in their favor (they usually get many days or even months of delay). But refusal can only result in dismissal – at worst and very rare – not criminal charges for refusing. Terms of employment contract, etc. Maybe that’s what you are thinking of? So a current federal employee under such an agreement might be compelled as a condition of continued employment to cooperate with an inquiry. But that’s not what this is. These people don’t work for the U.S. State Department anymore. So they can’t be fired. And for the last time they simply cannot be charged with any crime for refusing to give testimony to law enforcement officers. Nobody can.

Probably their best defense is silence, but the FBI is able and perfectly willing to go to a judge. They can and will play rough”

I don’t have any idea what you mean by this. Go to a judge and do what, exactly? Somehow get a judge to issue an order compelling them to answer police questions against their will? No such authority exists in U.S. law. I swear it. And seriously? If you thought about this for even a few minutes you’d realize how obvious that is. Why not “go to a judge” and get him to order drug couriers, and meth lab chemists to spill? If police investigators could simply apply to a judge and get some kind of judicial order compelling people to give evidence, it would be pretty fucking hard to pull off any kind of criminal enterprise relying on a conspiracy.

None of this depends on “politics” or “political pressure”. It’s just the law. Most of the time it’s pretty fucking boring. Most criminal investigations are mind-numbingly boring affairs. None more so than FBI investigations, teevee notwithstanding. Nobody here needs to “fall on a sword”. And it’s very unlikely that any “deals” are being cut. You’ve got yourself deep into the fever swamp on this one. I’m sorry to disappoint you or whatever sense of drama you have invested in this. But chances are pretty good the reason these folks have adopted to go with joint counsel at this stage is because they want to appear to be cooperative with the FBI, while protecting themselves and their legal rights. And one of those legal rights is the right to remain absolutely and utterly silent. Don’t hold your breath waiting for “stunning” new evidence to emerge from these interviews. This is pro-forma shit they have to do to close the file and send it to Main Justice. Then they can get back to their real careers.

@104“You leave out the fact that the judge can tell Al Capones bookkeeper that he is in contempt of court and hold the man indefinitely in jail or prison until he decides to talk.”

Only if he’s in fact in contempt. Which in the case cited would require the existence of an immunity agreement. By granting a witness immunity from prosecution for crimes revealed during their testimony, the witness cannot self-incriminate. Under those circumstances the judge may order the witness to testify and refusal would constitute an act of contempt. Without an immunity agreement, the protections of the 5th prevail.

@110, It looks like an employment agreement. The terms specified are conditioned on continued employment. It advises the undersigned employee about criminal penalties in the USC. And it sets forth policy, violations of which might be met with termination. I can’t find where it requires an employee to waive any legal rights. I don’t think it does. And it’s worth knowing that even having waived the right, whether explicitly or implicitly, the courts have long held that a person may re-invoke later with no penalty.

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